Monday, March 31, 2014

My favorite player of all time is Hall of Famer Willie McCovey. I
have amassed a collection of over 1100 different McCovey cards since I
started collecting him in the late 1980s. I will show off one of my
favorite cards every Monday. Stretch was one of the most feared hitters
of all time and I am excited to show off my collection.

Happy Opening Day everyone!

Quick post today showing a newer McCovey card in my collection from 2013 Topps. This card celebrates Willie Mac as the record holder for most Home Runs in Candlestick Park:

Candlestick was the park of my youth, I saw dozens of games there including Willie's last home game of his career. While he didn't hit a Home Run, he did hit one into the Right Center Field Gap for a double that most players would have gotten a triple on. His knees were shot his last few year but man could he hit the ball hard.

Typically I am on the fence with the commemorative cards but with such a connection to this one, I am very happy Topps decided to produce it.

Sunday, March 30, 2014

I am jealous of the bloggers who seem to score great cards and memorabilia for reasonable prices. When I was younger and living in Northern CA there was a flea market in Roseville that I attended quite a few times. There was an actual card dealer that set up there that had some reasonable prices and I always picked up a few odds and ends.

When I was young, I think around 10-12, I went to a flea market in Oakhurst CA with my grandparents and I remember stumbling across a box of vintage goodness. I believe it was a box with 3 rows of cards if memory serves me correctly. I remember picking up a handful of cards and thumbing through them and being amazed. I believe there was a 1961 Roger Maris and a second year Johnny Bench in that stack. I asked how much the cards were and the seller indicated the entire box had to go together for $100. I begged my grandparents and said it could count for the next 2 Christmases and Birthdays but they were not prepared to spend that much on my hobby. I just wonder what goodies I would have found if I had gotten that entire box.

Today the family and I decided to attend the Ventura Flea Market at the fairgrounds in Ventura, CA. It is a great location, right along the beach. The weather was sunny and windy today and I was hopefully I would find some stuff for my collection. While my wife found a few antique decorating things for the house and my kids each got a few little things to play around with, I departed with only 1 item:

This my friends is a factory set of 1991 Ultra baseball. I picked it up for $10. It isn't my favorite set but it is one that I did not have. I figured it would be tough to beat this price on line if only due to the shipping costs. Looking in Beckett, I am not sure Fleer produced factory sets so I will probably crack this and see if all the cards are in it.

I saw a few other things as I wandered around - mostly packs from the late 80s and early 90s for a buck a piece. I almost picked up 2 football traded sets from 1989 and 1990 Topps for $5 each but I really wasn't too excited about them. The craziest thing I saw was a guy selling packs of 1994 Upper Deck All-Time Heroes for $15/pack. He indicated that they had autograph cards in them. Well that set did but the odds were not good.

Nothing epic for sure but it was nice being out in the sun and ocean air digging for treasures. Next stop might have to be the Rose Bowl flea market to see if I can get luckier.

Saturday, March 29, 2014

One of my 2 LCS ran a contest recently and if you purchased 5 or more packs of 2014 Heritage you got an entry to win a couple cards. The contest was to predict the exact number of runs scored by the Dodgers and Dback in their 2 game Australian season opening series. I correctly picked 16 runs, the exact number the two teams scored. For my prognostication skills I won these two cards:

A 2011 Bowman Chrome Prospects Auto of Dodgers 2B Dee Gordon. I believe Dee is in a platoon at second for the Dodgers, he didn't play in game one but went 3-4 in game two.

The second card is this Jumbo Bat Relic of rehabbing star OF Matt Kemp. Despite this cards Dodgerness, it is a nice looking card.

These cards could probably be pried away in a trade but the Kemp may be more challenging for me to part with. Giants relics of similar quality would probably be the best way to part with these but I don't think I am too tough to trade with.

This post has way too much Dodgerness in it so I will leave you with the nice Auto of former Giant 3B and current Nats manager Matt Williams:

Thursday, March 27, 2014

I strongly considered cutting way back on my set pursuits this year but a couple things have happened that have made me change my mind. First was the announcement that Panini was going to issue a Donruss set. I have every Donruss set produced and this new set is close enough to some older Donruss designs to reel me in. Then I saw the Heritage release, like many others the 1965 design is a favorite of mine. I thought I could resist but it didn't happen. In the end I purchased a box of Donruss and quite a few retail packs and 3 hobby boxes plus a few retail packs of Heritage.

I never gave thought to skipping the flagship set. I bought my Jumbo box, hobby packs and retail packs along with some single inserts. I quickly considered and dismissed the notion of skipping Opening Day. It is usually a cheap break with good inserts and this year didn't disappoint. I think the inserts are better than the flagship and I wouldn't even call it close. Therefore, in addition to the base set, I once again am going after the insert sets.

So I need some help from my fellow bloggers, I don't have the funds to go out and complete my enitre want list with purchases so I need to make some trades to whittle it down.

I have a Set Want List link that I keep upgraded but just in case you didn't want to leave this page I thought I would share my want lists for the 4 sets I am working on and share some trade bait from those sets as well.

2014 Topps Heritage Then and Now #TANGW Bob Gibson/Adam Wainwright2014 Topps Heritage Then and Now #TANMC Juan Marichal/Bartolo Colon2014 Topps Heritage Then and Now #TANMD Willie Mays/Chris Davis2014 Topps Heritage Then and Now #TANMS Juan Marichal/Max Scherzer2014 Topps Heritage Then and Now #TANRD Frank Robinson/Chris Davis

I also have base cards from all 4 sets. I could probably put some nice starter sets together of Heritage (without SPs) and the Series 1 flagship set. If you are interested, I can give you a count of how many cards I could send your way.Let's make some trades. I have some free time this weekend before heading out of town next week. No trade is too small, <4-5 cards we can do a PWE. I also have tons of stuff other than 2014 cards so if you have something off my want list, let's make a deal. Also don't forget about my Giants want lists!

I have another great trade to showcase, this time it was a trade with Daniel from It's Like Having My Own Card Shop. The trade started with Daniel offering some help for my 2013 Topps Chrome Update set and as usual the trade expanded beyond its origins. Here are the goods:

Here are the 4 Chrome Update cards that I got towards my now completed set. I scored 3 rookies out of the 4 cards which was very nice. Liriano is a guy I like, the Giants gave him away years ago and he was on my fantasy team for a couple years. He looks odd in a Pirates uniform but I do like the overall look of the card.

Daniel included a nice stack of Giants and here are some of my favorites. The Aurilia in the upper left is a glossy parallel serial numbered to 200, my first glossy from the set. I am slowly inching my way to the black parallel set from Upper Deck's OPC release. The blue UD Spectrum card is the first card I have seen of that color, it doesn't fit with the Giants colors but it looks decent. The Bronze 206 Sanchez parallel leaves me 3 cards from that parallel team set. The parallels to the flagship sets are always welcome. The SPx card of Giant short timer Kenny Lofton features a cool picture and finished that team set. I love the Alou Studio Stars insert, it is almost the feel of a credit card and looks real nice. The nice mini from the first Topps set of Gypsy Queen brought me closer to that team set, I still need 7 but 6 of them are SPs. Finally I scored 2 of the 3 1992 Donruss Cracker Jack cards - just need Will the Thrill to finish it off.

Daniel, thanks for the great trade. The set help and hitting on so many parts of my Giants collection is greatly appreciated!

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

I may never get caught up on trade posts but I will continue to make the effort. This trade was from back around the first of the year and I got a great batch of Giants from Matt over at DocHoloday. To show how pathetic I am, check out Matt's post about our trade - he apologized for taking too long to post and his post was on 1/28, oops.

I got a nice stack of Giants and here are some of my favorites:

Lots of parallels and inserts featured here. After dipping into the die cut business last year with the Willie Mays card and going the mini route a couple years back in Lineage with the Monte Irvin card, Topps merged the mini and die cut themes into the 1989 Die Cut Minis we find in 2014 Topps. Seeing that green Vogelsong reminds me of how much more I liked the green over this year's red. I was hoping Hembree would make the Giants this year in the bullpen but I predict he will be up sometime soon. One of these days I am going to get up the courage to pop out one of the stand up cards and use them for what they were designed to do.

I saved my favorite 3 for the end. I didn't put together the Gypsy Queen set last year but really enjoy these White Border parallels, they just frame up the card so well. The Xfractor look of the once top Giants prospect Gary Brown looks really nice, almost as nice as the Hunter Pence blue Prizm card, a thing of beauty.

Thanks Matt for the trade! I am sure I can drum up another stack of Sox if you have some Giants I need. Sorry for the slow post.

Monday, March 24, 2014

My favorite player of all time is Hall of Famer Willie McCovey. I
have amassed a collection of over 1100 different McCovey cards since I
started collecting him in the late 1980s. I will show off one of my
favorite cards every Monday. Stretch was one of the most feared hitters
of all time and I am excited to show off my collection.

Earlier this month I posted about a trade I was about to complete involving sending away one of my favorite cards in my McCovey collection. If you missed the post or forget the card I decided to trade, check out this post before going further...

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Last week I got the 2 cards in return to complete the trade.

This is the first card. It is another Autograph from the same 2005 Ultimate product but a different subset. I liked the coloring of the card I traded away better than this one but the action shot on her is an improvement in my opinion. Also, the circulation on this is twice as much being serial numbered /20 vs. /10. I really like this card but when he offered it up, it just wasn't enough to part with the Decades card.

Here is what he threw in to sweeten the pot.

Another 2005 Ultimate card, this time a dual signature with Harmon Killebrew joining Willie Mac on a Signatures 500 HRs card. This is a pretty rare card as well being serial numbered out of 35. I think this is a beautifully designed card and it has the same McCovey picture and some of that orange coloring on the bottom half of the card.

Overall I do miss the card I gave up but I feel good about the trade. The guy I traded it to completed a 90 card autograph Decades set and sent me a link to a photobucket page with all the cards - it is beautiful and I am glad he was able to finish his years long quest. I also have 2 nice, new high end McCovey cards in my collection. Be gentle but let me know what you think.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Back in 1991 we were a nation at war in the Middle East and Topps decided to do something in support of our service people. They decided to put together a parallel set of their 40th Anniversary set and distribute the cards to those serving our country.

Here is a description of the set from Beckett.com:

These 792 standard-size cards are parallel to the regular Topps issue. These cards were issued in special packs available only to service people serving in the Desert Shield (later to be Desert Storm) campaign. The cards are differentiated by a "Desert Shield" gold foil logo in the upper right corner. There were many different types of forgeries created for these cards so some caution is urged in purchasing any expensive cards from the set.

I remember picking up the Rickey Henderson and Dave Winfield cards in the mid 90s and being very excited about the additions. Recently I recognized that I didn't have any Giants from this set in my collection and decided I needed to pick up one or two. I did a search and found a seller on eBay who was breaking a set and put in bids of a dollar or two on all the Giants he was selling. I hoped and figured a small number would land in my lap.

Imagine my surprise when I won 14 different cards from the team set. This is just under half of the 29 card team set. I don't plan on going aggressively after the rest of the cards at this point but I have a great representation in my 1991 Giants binder.

Have a look:

As you can see, there is a gold logo in the upper right hand corner of these cards. Beckett.com references lots of fakes but the max I paid for one of these was $2.22 so I doubt someone would go to the trouble of forging them for that price.

I like this second batch and was glad to get the Williams All-Star card. I like how Topps lowered the Desert Shield logo down a little on the All-Star card so the All-Star portion of the card is not obscured. They also slid the logo over on the Kelly Downs card so it didn't cover his head. For some reason I feel that they may not take the same card today.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

I recently received a nice package of cards from a relatively new blogger, Matt writer of Bob Walk the Plank. I have really enjoyed checking out his amazing Pirates collection, I am a big fan of the Pirates uniforms and Matt has displayed some great patches from his collection.

Let me share some of the goods that I received...

First up are some misc Giants cards, these were my favorite from the group. At first glace I thought Topps had been lazy again and the two Posey's in the upper row were the same picture. Then I pulled my head out and realized one was featuring a home uniform and the other a road uniform. The 2 1971 minis remind me that I haven't done much in the way of the 1971 set so far this year.

I got a nice big stack of Barry Bonds HR History cards. I needed almost all that Matt include, here are 7 of the 20 that I needed. Every time I get one of these cards, I remind you to check my want list and send me any that I may need. If you collected during this time frame you have these sitting around and we all know that everyone but me hates Barry.

The final card is an awesome dual relic of Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda. Matt dropped me a note saying that even though Orlando wasn't featured as a Giant he hoped I would enjoy it and do I. This will fit nicely in my HOFer collection, I think it is a beautiful card.

Thanks Matt for the cards, I am working on a package to send your way soon.

Friday, March 21, 2014

I am slowly but surely knocking off some of my Vida Blue needs issued during his career since I kick started my collection of his cards. I was recently able to pick up this cool oddball item from a seller on eBay.

This is a 7-11 Slurpee cup from 1982. It is just under 5 inches tall and I picked it up for $2 plus $3.40 shipping - not too bad.

The picture on the side is obviously a picture of Vida in his Giants uniform with the SF on his hat airbrushed out. By 1982 he had joined the Royals so I am not sure if all of the cups were airbrushed or just Vida's.

I like the cartoon of a pitcher on one side, it looks a little like Vida.

Finally the write up. No mention of his time with the Giants which is kind of a bummer, it sounds like he went straight from the A's to the Royals in a trade. The reference to him batting "both" reminds me of a trivia questions when I was younger - "Who was the last AL MVP winner who was a switch hitter?". I think he is still the answer to that question - use it to stump your friends. Even though he is listed as a Royal, I think this cup may find a place on one of my Giants shelves.

One of my goals this year is to get my 1970 Topps want list down to 50 or fewer cards. As I attempt to work on this set, I am realizing that this quest may be much tougher than I expected. This week I was able to pick up 7 new cards for my set, all high numbers, take a look:

Speaking of high numbers, that is where my problem comes into play. With these cards I now have 616 of the 720 cards in the set. That means I need to pick up 54 cards to reach my goal and almost all of them are high numbers. The non-high numbers include Reggie Jackson, Hank Aaron and the Thurman Munson rookie. Ouch!

I know there are quite a few bloggers and readers out there that have worked on vintage sets. Ideally I would love to trade for the cards I need (see my want list) but the help I am looking for is a lead to somewhere that doesn't charge an arm and a leg (or $8-$10/card) for a higher number 1970 Topps card. I have checked eBay, Beckett, COMC and a couple other smaller sites and can't seem to find too many. I did get lucky on the auction for the 7 cards above, finding a pick from this list of cards auction for 80 cents apiece.

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Back in the days when I spent most of my hobby time on Sports Card Forums, the thought of sending cards in a PWE was frowned upon by most. In trades with just a few cards I always gave it a try but there were few takers. Over the last several months in the blogging community, the usage of PWEs has taken off. I have sent some out as surprises, received them as surprises and made trades via PWE. The only down side is that the trade posts seem to stack up. I am decided to celebrate the PWE and get a little more caught up while I am at it tonight. Here are the goods from a number of PWEs I have received over the last few months.

These cards and stickers helped me in my quest to build the 2013 Archives set and inserts. All 3 of these stickers feature cards of players I also collect (Parker, McCovey, Henderson) so I had to pick up more than one copy.

I love me some parallels but man that Posey is sweet. I recall a write up about the person that makes these but I couldn't find it. I can tell you that this is one great customer card.

All Trade Bait, All the Time reached out to me to see if I was interested in an upgrade to my Claude Osteen for my 1968 Topps Game set so I sent him my slightly more worn one and some cards and got these in return:

Always enjoy some misc Giants...

And here is the updade Osteen - just have 3 of the more challenging cards to go for that set.

While this is only a base card, it is numbered to 125. I made some early bids on the Giants from this set and they all went for more than I wanted to pay. They are nice looking cards with good card stock.

The final cards are from former blogger The Adventures of Napkin Doon. I always enjoyed his posts and wish him the best moving forward. My favorites were his sharing of the adventures at his LCS Cleeves.

It started off with a couple nice shiny cards...

and ended with this awesome blue bordered Heritage Buster Posey!

Thanks to everyone for keeping the PWE alive and thanks for all the great cards!!!

About Me

I am an avid sports card collector and enjoy building sets, team collecting and player collecting. This blog is my attempt to dive deeper into the blog world to rid myself of cards that don't fit into my collection and add gems that do.